Riso 2023

Introducing RISO 2023 – an easy-to-use set of 21 brushes for Procreate, bringing the crisp and gorgeous textures of Risograph printing to Procreate! Amazing for illustration of all kinds, ‘Risograph’ is a soy-based ink printing process, designed mainly for high-volume photocopying and printing. It was released in Japan in August 1986 and remains much-loved by artists today for its wonderful visual aesthetic.

Our flagship collection, this brush line has been in development for over four years now! Today is no exception – we’ve commissioned and scanned all new source material that brings a superior crisp and authentic risograph feel. Several real Risograph print samples were deconstructed and analyzed resulting in a compact yet efficient set of brushes. Don’t take our word for it, check out this demonstration gif (sped up).

As you can see, these brushes behave just like the inks they mimic – every time you lift your pen and put a new mark down, it adds to the previous mark and the colors combine. So when yellow is put down over blue it turns… green! This only works when working on the same layer, but you can change the layer blend mode of the top layer to “Multiply” for the same effect. You could also use these brushes to mask solid shapes to apply the texture on top!

RISO Includes 21 brushes – Each of these and an additional “flat” variant, so you can easily switch between multiply blend mode and direct shading. 

• Airbrush Mist – This is a really nice brush for adding a natural airbrush quality to your RISO designs, many traditional risograph artworks makes use of this look.
• Bold Texture – This is a shader brush that really brings the texture of RISO to the forefront of your art, with larger and very bold chiclet patterns perfect for adding texture and really emphasizing that RISO look.
• Chunky Bold Texture – For the most part these brushes use a finer risograph texture, but we felt it was important to include a variety of texture sizes, and this is the chunkiest of them all!
• Subtle Grain – It’s exactly like it sounds! This brush handles wonderfully, and is perfect for masking in texture to shapes or shading in layers of colors!
• Chunky Subtle Grain – Slightly less subtle but still subtle grain shading!
• Flat Shader – this is good for building “flats”, i.e. flat color shapes that build your scene, which you can add shading to. A must have for making easy work of flats!
• Coarse Shader – A chunkier size of the Flat Shader.
• Grungy Shader – This is perfect for adding a distress grimy bit of print effect.
• Speckled Liner – Draw with the look of risograph! Your go-to for drawing in details and linework.
• Grungy Liner – More of a general gritty print look for a liner, good for filling in solid areas.
• Paper Distress – This is one of my favorite brushes, you can use it do add some distressed shading with a paper texture look, or you can use it with masks to “poke holes” in your layers that reveal layers beneath, which does wonder for getting that natural organic feel. This brush does not have a “flat” variant.